


Far to Fall

by justkatherinetheokay



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chess, Christmas Angst, Flashbacks, M/M, Vietnam War, again rated Teen for brief language, because I'm not sure I'm capable of writing anything else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justkatherinetheokay/pseuds/justkatherinetheokay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chess game on a plane, and the potential--soon to be dashed, of course--for a turnaround.</p><p>Not really intended as a sequel to Where Were You When You Heard?, but I guess it sort of is unofficially since those events are mentioned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far to Fall

“Mate in four.” Charles frowned and studied the board for a minute. Then he sat back in his seat.

“Well played.” 

“And you.” Erik inclined his head, the picture of politeness. Charles looked away, out the window at the darkness that hid everything but the stars and a very full moon. Logan lay asleep near the back of the plane, and Hank had closed the door to the cockpit as the sun went down. They were effectively alone. 

  


The last time Charles was alone with Erik, it was Christmas day and he was in the hospital, just beginning the third month of his stay, and when it came down to it, he refused to face him. That was his Christmas gift to himself: pretending to be asleep. He had felt them coming as soon as they entered the building. Raven was legally his sister, there was no denying it, so they had been allowed in to see him. It gave him plenty of time to settle beneath the thin blankets, close his eyes, and make sure his countenance would stay relaxed, all before the nurse let them in. 

They both stood there awkwardly for a moment, on the other side of the room. Charles never stirred, but examined them mentally, as if he stood— _stood_ , ha—before them. They were in civilian clothes and faces, Raven looking like Raven always did at Christmas, Erik’s turtleneck burgundy today. Festive, he thought dryly, coldly, distantly, before he remembered that Erik had no reason to be, and that the color was a part of his persona now. Looking at them hurt, but no more than anything else did, so he turned his examinations inward. 

_Fuck Christmas,_ Erik—no, Magneto—was thinking, _it means nothing to_ me. _Why did I agree to come here? She should have come alone. He might have woken up for her, if it was_ just _her. This was a terrible idea—_ He was petulant. He was repulsed by the sight of the man before him, once quick to smile and laugh, once full of life, looking so small and pale and weakened in that hospital bed. It was an awful kind of horror brought on mostly by pity, and Charles hated to see himself through those eyes, from that perspective, in that way. He touched his mind for only an instant before dropping it as if scalded. It was still long enough to absorb all that, and long enough to realize he would have to dig a lot harder if he expected to find even an ounce of guilt for his state anywhere in Magneto. Scalded indeed. 

Raven—no, Mystique—felt guiltier. He didn’t need to reach to feel it—she had grown up with him, after all, and though she had explicitly banned him from deliberately reading her mind she had, at some point, figured out how to push at him anything she _wanted_ him to know. Perhaps even now she was still projecting. Subconsciously, maybe, but still. Projecting her guilt at him. Even that very, very little bit of hope made Charles feel ever so slightly better. Far from Christmasy, but better. 

“If he’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake him,” she said aloud then. _Good_. 

“No,” Magneto agreed. “I doubt he would take kindly to that.” 

“Yeah.” Raven (he couldn’t call her Mystique, he just couldn’t, not when her mind still _felt_ just like his little sister) sighed. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” 

“Perhaps if I go,” said Magneto. _Yes,_ Charles thought, and was strongly tempted to project it, even to coerce it. _Yes, you should go. You shouldn’t have come in the first place._ But that would give him up as conscious, and as long as they thought he was asleep they would be honest here, and as long as he feigned sleep he didn’t have to deal with them normally. Telepathy or no, there was still a certain something to dealing with others in physical form that psychic communication lacked. That went both ways, of course, and varied day to day—and today telepathy held a certain detachment that Charles rather liked for this situation. 

“No, no,” said Raven. “If he’s sleeping, there’s not much point in staying.” 

“I suppose not.” Was that _doubt_? From the high and mighty Magneto? _Surely not_ , Charles thought a little scathingly. Across the room, Raven sighed again before stepping forward, toward the bed. 

“Well, in case you can hear me,” she said, “if it comes to you when you wake—merry Christmas, Charles.” He lay still, kept his breath steady, as she bent over him and pressed a kiss to his forehead. He made a show of stirring slightly, and felt her breath catch for an instant where she was bent down above him, but then he lay still again and she was never the wiser. As she stepped aside, he felt her mind calm at the thought that at least she had come to see him, at least she had done this, at least they could be together on Christmas, if only for a little while. He heard and felt her set something down on his bedside table. It crinkled. A present. He had nothing for her; a large part of him hadn’t expected to see her again for a long time, if ever. Instead he reached out and gently amplified the calm, the contentedness that was edging in on the guilt, until it took her over. He kept his reach restrained, his touch light. Raven wouldn’t know the difference, and for the moment, Charles rather thought it was the kindest gift he could give her, angry as he still was. 

“You go on,” said Magneto as Raven went back to stand by him, by the door. “I’ll be right out.” 

“Don’t hurt him,” she said coolly, suspiciously. Magneto laughed, a single hollow _ha_. 

“Look around you, Mystique,” he said. “I think I’ve hurt him about as much as I can.” 

_Truer words were never spoken._ Or if they were, it wasn’t by you. 

“Still, resist the temptation if it strikes,” said Raven, “it is _Christmas_ ,” and with that she left the room. Magneto stepped forward, toward the foot of the bed. 

“Stop pretending, Charles,” he said, his voice quieter, his tone softer. That was Erik’s voice, but that didn’t make him Erik, not like Raven was Raven today, not when his _mind_ was cold and steely, Magneto all the way through. It occurred to Charles that he hadn’t worn the helmet. Perhaps it was meant as a gesture of goodwill, but now he had touched that mind he almost wished Magneto had blocked him out. It would have hurt less to assume Erik was untrusting than to know he was uncaring. “I know you’re awake. I remember what your mind feels like.” 

_I could make you forget._

“I know,” said Magneto. “But you won’t.” Charles kept his mental grumbling to himself at that, and for a moment he seriously considered it—but this wasn’t the time, and definitely not the place. Perhaps on a different occasion. He didn’t reply, and so they remained stationary, in silence on all planes, for another minute before Magneto spoke again. “Charles. Mein Freund.” Oh. Oh, no. That was Erik, that was the same Erik who had let him in that misty morning out on the lawn, the one who had kissed him across the chessboard later that night, the one who, forward though he’d been, still seemed barely to dare to believe that Charles kissed back. _Mein Freund_ indeed.“ _Please_.” 

He did not reply. The silence stretched on and on, thinner and tauter, until Magneto broke it with a sharp, snapped word. 

“Fine,” he snarled. “Happy fucking Christmas, Charles.” The British phrasing, Charles thought dully, that Raven had somehow never picked up. Apparently Erik had, sometime, somewhere. Something dropped onto the bedside table to rest with Raven’s present with a soft clatter. Charles closed his eyes a bit tighter and stayed as far away as possible as Magneto swept from the room. 

“Oh, how nice,” said the nurse when she came back in to find him staring blankly at the ceiling. “They left you presents. Sister and brother-in-law, was it?” Charles’ stomach twisted, but he kept his face blank and mumbled only, “something like that,” and pretended to be asleep again. 

When Hank came down from Westchester the next day, he didn’t comment on the fact that the presents still sat there unopened. He didn’t even ask who they were from. He just smiled sadly and squeezed Charles’ hand. 

Raven’s present, when he could bring himself to open it three days later, was fingerless gloves much like his increasingly ratty old black ones. These were soft and new and cobalt, a color not dissimilar from her natural skin. The gift came beautifully wrapped in red and gold. 

Magneto’s three-dimensional metal logic puzzle stayed in its utilitarian brown paper and blue twine wrapping until a year later, a month and three days after the assassination, when Charles was back in Westchester with those friends still loyal and those students who hadn’t gone home for the holidays, and Erik was imprisoned deep beneath the Pentagon. 

And so they came full circle. 

  


“It really wasn’t,” he said rather abruptly. 

“What?” 

“It wasn’t well-played. Not on my end.” 

“Oh,” said Erik. “Well—no, it was, it was—” 

“Shite. I know. I _told_ you I’m out of practice.” 

“No, no—not _terrible_ —” Charles actually laughed, surprising them both. 

“Stop it,” he said. “Do I really look that bad?” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Erik very carefully. Charles narrowed his eyes. 

“I mean,” he said, “do I truly look so haggard as to suggest that I’ll hit you again at the slightest provocation?” It was _somewhat_ true, he supposed, but the slight provocation would have to be something very specific, and at the moment their conversation was so lighthearted that he couldn’t think what that might be. 

“Honestly?” said Erik. “It might be that you haven’t slept, but I’m actually more concerned you’ll cry.” 

“Ah.” Charles ran over the conversation as it stood so far in his head, wondering where he ought to go from there. Chess wasn’t the only area where he was rather out of practice. An inflection from a few sentences ago caught, and he frowned. “What did you mean, you don’t know what I mean? That is, if something in my appearance suggests tears to you—” 

“It’s the red-rimmed eyes,” said Erik, “come on, that’s about all it could be—” 

“Then clearly you _did_ know what I was talking about,” Charles continued, and this entire question was a grievous wound to all that was good in grammar and rhetoric, but damned if he wasn’t going to pick on Erik for all he could. “Which means you meant something else in stating you didn’t know what I meant, which suggests, perhaps, you were in fact struggling to discern to which of _several_ grievances I was referring, as my personal appearance—” 

The chess pieces would have flown everywhere, but Erik caught them as they went. They floated in midair at the center of the cabin, very distracting in Charles’ peripheral vision as his eyes stayed open wide in shock when, just as he had the first time, Erik leaned across the chessboard to kiss him. 

“I’d forgotten how badly you need to be shut up sometimes,” he said when he pulled away again. His tone, his smile, were very fond. Charles looked down, keeping his eyes on the chessboard as Erik set each piece back in place one at a time. He was trying to think how to rebuff him when Erik amended himself. “Hippie.” 

“Excuse me?” Charles was surprised into looking up. Erik still looked terribly fond, but there was a spark of mirth behind it now. Testing the waters of things that might make Charles cry again, or _something_. 

“You heard me.” Or something, indeed. 

“What, because of my hair?” 

“No—well—yeah, because of your hair.” 

“You weren’t even around for the advent of hippies,” said Charles, most certainly not petulantly, not at all. 

“And whose fault was that?” 

“Not mine,” said Charles coolly. “And I’m not one, not at all.” 

“Long hair, drugs, anti-war, anti-violence.” Erik shrugged. “If the shoe fits.” He said it all so _dismissively_. 

“Well, if that’s what defines a hippie to you, then I take it back,” said Charles. “I’ll accept the classification with pride.” He cocked his head to one side, raised his eyebrows. A challenge. Go further. The corner of Erik’s mouth quirked towards a smile. “Hippie and proud.” At that, Erik sat back in his seat, smile vanishing, and rolled his eyes. 

“It was so nice,” he said with just a hint of bitterness. “Ten years in prison—” 

“Barely more than nine, you utter _baby_ —” 

“It sounds better rounded,” said Erik flatly. “Ten years in prison. Gave me plenty of time to idealize you again.” As he spoke, he moved a pawn. For all it was the middle of the night, Charles felt more awake than he had in a while. Another game would do fine. 

“Reality not living up to the fantasy?” said Charles, and made his own move. 

“I never expected it to.” Erik shrugged. “I’m well aware I take most of the blame in destroying the version I fell in love with. Not that I wouldn’t love any version of you, I think; I just never thought you’d fall this far.” 

“Don’t say that,” said Charles quietly. 

“Oh, come on,” said Erik, jerking a piece forward more than sliding it, “I already have, if not in so many words—I think you know well how far you’ve fallen—” 

“Oh, I’m a changed man,” said Charles, “there’s no denying it. But I didn’t mean you shouldn’t say _that_.” His hand shook slightly as he moved the next pawn. They sat in silence for a very long, very loud moment. In the back of the plane, Logan snored. In a happier time they would have burst into simultaneous giggles, but right now it defused nothing. 

“Oh,” said Erik very quietly, and surveyed the board for just a few seconds before a piece darted forward to knock the pawn over rather viciously. It was a terrible move, vindictive rather than tactical, and within just a few more Charles had the upper hand as he hadn’t all night, as he hadn’t had in years. 

“Emotions make you sloppy, my friend,” Charles said lightly after perhaps five minutes of stony silence. “Always have.” 

“Funny, when trying to vanquish yours was what did the same to you,” said Erik. Charles nodded a concession. 

“Fair enough.” 

  


How far he _had_ fallen, in those attempts. He had been well on his way, sure enough, but the first time Charles Xavier really lost his grip, it was December of 1969 and September 24, Alex Summers’ birthday, had just been the last of the draft numbers called. Hank beat him in ten minutes, leaving him staring at the board in frustration and confusion. Dulled by serum and more prominently alcohol, yes, dulled like his brain, which was why Hank had won at all, but it wasn’t as if the emotions just _vanished_. God, he wished they would. 

The teachers and oldest students, those who weren’t gone already, had all retreated hours ago into their rooms, many of them to prepare to leave. Charles had asked for the serum for their sake, not his, certainly not—they didn’t need _his_ grief and turmoil added on top of theirs. Hank just sighed at the request when he made it before the broadcast. 

“Due respect, Professor, but are you sure it’s not that _you_ don’t want to deal with _their_ feelings?” 

“Of course not!” said Charles indignantly. “Honestly, Hank, I’m not sure what I’ve done to lose your faith so much as it seems I have.” 

“Right.” Hank’s exhausted glance at the neat row of empty whiskey bottles lined up on the buffet was anything but subtle. “I’ll just get that for you.” 

“Thank you,” said Charles with as much dignity as he could muster. 

“I suppose it’s for the best,” Hank muttered when he returned with the serum and the tie, when he was rolling up Charles’ sleeve. “After all, I can’t imagine you’ve forgotten what happened when we heard about Sean.” 

“No, indeed.” What happened then, his psychic reaction to the killed-in-action letter, had been momentarily far more violent than Charles would ever like. It was still nothing to the Kennedy shooting—but that was different. That was— 

And now he sat across the chessboard from the wrong person entirely for having his king in checkmate. He tried to tell himself that Hank was an intellectual prodigy, but _Charles had been too_ , his pride retorted wholly ungraciously, back in a time too distant and happy to seem quite real as he thought about it now. 

“Professor?” said Hank, breaking that reverie. “Would you like a rematch?” 

“No, thank you,” said Charles, on the verge of tears, and stood, since he could, and walked himself upstairs to lie in the dark, feigning sleep as he always did when Hank peered in a half-hour later, where he didn’t have to think anymore. 

  


“Why not?” Erik shoved a bishop along a diagonal to take a rook, only to see it dashed aside by Charles’ knight. He growled in frustration, low in his throat. “Why _not_ , Charles?” Charles frowned, spinning a pawn between his fingers, still thinking how to answer. “Because I _abandoned_ you?” Thankfully, his tone in echoing it wasn’t quite mocking. Had it been, the conversation might have gone downhill fast. 

“Not that,” said Charles. “That is—yes, that, absolutely that, but more that I think time has passed rather differently for you than it has for me. Total separation has changed us both, but yours was separation from the world entirely.” He sighed. “You have no concept of me as I am today.” 

“Yes, well.” Erik shrugged. “I just said I’d love any version of you.” He smiled. “Even a hippie who can’t seem to beat me at chess.” He looked up, face impassive, but his eyes were almost as uncharacteristically shy as they had been after the first kiss. “And you?” 

“I could never love the man who killed the President,” said Charles, “but as it turns out, you’re not that.” 

“That’s not exactly an answer.” 

“I’m not certain either part of it is exactly true, either.” He shook his head. As soon as the words were out he had doubted them, because in truth—“I imagine—I imagine yes,” he said, “the same goes for me—but that question is beside the point. What matters, my old friend, is whether I can _trust_ any particular version of you. This version. And this time, I’m sorry, but I don’t know if I can delude myself into it again.” 

“I suppose I can understand that.” Erik frowned at the board. “Was it really a matter of self-delusion, Charles?” Charles sighed. 

“To be quite honest, I have no idea what was going on with any of us back then, not anymore,” he said wearily. They looked at each other for a long moment. It was surprisingly relaxed, that look. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charles added, more lightheartedly. “I’m no Fischer, certainly, never was, but I _can_ still beat you at chess, Erik.” Without looking, he moved his Queen forward. “Mate in four.” 

“What?” said Erik, startled, and turned his attention back to the board. “Oh.” 

“Yes.” 

“ _That_ was well-played.” 

“Thank you.” Charles paused. “Do you want me to be polite, or—?” Erik laughed for the first time in—well, probably the first time in nine years. 

“No, I know,” he said. “This time my game was scheiße.” They sat in silence for a moment while Erik began to replace the pieces again. “What did you mean, you’re no Fischer?” he asked, and it struck Charles just how much of the world Erik had missed, down there beneath the Pentagon. 

“Oh, Bobby Fischer, he’s—he’s just a chess champion. Played a Cold War match, beat the Soviet—but it doesn’t matter.” His eyes widened as something occurred to him. “My god, you missed the _Beatles_. Almost entirely.” 

“The who?” said Erik, who now just looked confused. Now Charles laughed, and the confusion deepened. 

“Them too.” 

“What?” 

“Got a lot to catch you up on, bub,” said Logan, out of nowhere, from the back of the plane. Charles and Erik both jumped. Logan rolled his eyes, stood, and stretched as far as the huge man could in the confined space of the plane. “It’s gonna have to wait, though.” He leaned across the cabin to peer out the window. Charles followed his gaze from where he sat, and was slightly startled to see lights beneath them. “Guess we’ll be landing soon,” said Logan, just as Hank slid open the cockpit door to confirm that. 

Charles started to busy himself putting away the pieces, but Erik caught his wrist before he could. As the pawns started to float one by one into their places in the drawer, their eyes locked. Either the serum was wearing off or he was just self-conscious—the latter, Charles decided, as thankfully he could still flex the muscles in his calves—but for the moment he was very aware of Logan in the back looking determinedly elsewhere, and Hank in the cockpit focusing pointedly on flying the damn plane, and here, the soft pressure of familiar fingers just above his palm. 

“What do you think, this time?” said Erik quietly. “Can you trust this version?” 

“I think that remains to be seen,” Charles replied, looking away, out the window. Erik gazed at him a moment. 

“I suppose so,” he finally said, and straightened, stepping away. The lights outside were growing nearer and nearer. At least this time, Charles supposed, he wouldn’t be distracted by the psyche where the actions should rightly speak louder. And as to those actions, it did, for now, remain to be seen. 

For the moment, a small part of him barely dared to hope that things would go right. It was probably a very dangerous hope to carry, when things had so very far to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Charles doesn't know that German doesn't differentiate between friend and s/o. In fact, according to one source I found, when you use the possessive (mein Freund, literally 'my friend', oh my god I love this ship) that is in fact the linguistic cue used to imply the non-platonic-ness.
> 
> The Draft Lottery was a thing that happened on December 1, 1969, for all men born between 1944 and 1950. I might be fudging ages a little here, but I don't have anything telling me Alex _didn't_ turn eighteen somewhere in the course of First Class, so here we are.
> 
> Bobby Fischer was a rather eccentric and sometimes controversial American grandmaster. In 1972 he played a highly-hyped "Cold War confrontation" chess tournament against the reigning Soviet world champ, Boris Spassky, in Reykjavik. Fischer won.
> 
> And yes, the Beatles started to get some attention around 1962, but they didn't take off in the US until 1964, which is also when the Who came into being. And the Beatles broke up in 1970.
> 
> And since Charles lives in New York, if Erik hadn't been literally living in a hole in the ground for the past nine + years, he definitely would have made a Woodstock joke somewhere in the course of the hippie conversation. But he was, so he didn't.


End file.
